These shoes were made for walking

As head of SAS Americas, I walk a lot. In and out of meetings, onto planes, sometimes over competitors and always into Jim Goodnight’s office whenever I’ve got good news to share. Plus I pace on stage.

All that walking requires a good shoe. I’ve found the best shoe is one that fits your path in life. And you won’t find a better-fitting shoe than at DSW – thanks to SAS.

With SAS® Size Profiling and Pack Optimization, the second-largest shoe retailer in the US is now analyzing sales at the store level, and shipping each of its 377 stores the most popular sizes and styles for that location. Sounds simple, but an analytics-based inventory platform of this caliber is unique. The results have been fewer stock-outs and markdowns. DSW profits from having your shoe in stock, and you walk out a happy customer.

It’s been a sincere pleasure working with EVP Harris Mustafa on this project. Harris put it to me like this. “We used to believe that having a great assortment of shoes and boots was all we needed to do. We now see how much incremental business we have gained by having the right sizes of those shoes and boots available in our stores and online. We couldn’t do that before SAS.”

I’m proud of that.

Here’s how it works. Historically at DSW, shoes were shipped in standard 12-packs. It didn’t matter if a store needed only sizes 7 and 8 of a particular style, they would get a pack with sixes and nines too. With no optimized, sustainable or automated system in place, customized packs were a bear. With SAS, DSW now takes a data-driven approach to managing inventory, and the results have been, well … check out their stock value since partnering with us in 2011.

Granted, DSW isn’t using brainwaves to determine shoe prices quite yet, but the SAS customer intelligence platform seems to be working nicely for them.

I’ve got hundreds of stories like this. Companies partnering with SAS to do better business. As they arise, I’ll share them on this blog. Meanwhile, read the full version of the DSW success story at sas.com.

Until next time, walk boldly my friends.

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Have you used analytics to better serve your customers? If so, leave a comment. I’d love to hear your story.